Liquid scintillation counting comprises the addition of a specimen that emits nuclear radiation to an organic liquid mixture which in turn emits light when intercepting the radiation. The organic liquid mixture is often called a "scintillation cocktail." More specifically, in liquid scintillation counting, scintillation cocktails are used to measure the radioactivity of alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray emitters and thereby their concentrations. A flash of light is detected, for example, by a photocell which is in a circuit that counts the flashes. Generally, the cocktail comprises an aromatic solvent for capturing the energy of the radiation, primary and secondary fluors for converting the energy to a light flash and surfactants to enable the intimate admixture of the cocktail with the specimen. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,527 for general background.
The ideal scintillation cocktail would provide a very high degree of efficiency (number of flashes detected for number of radiated particles) over a range of specimen cocktail mixtures and for a large number of specimen types. Formulations that work well with electrolytic specimens tend not to work well with pure water or, say, water and dextrose solutions.